THE GOBWOOD
Goblin, Fantasy, and RPG Blog
Not every campaign is suitable for goblins, and not every DM wants you to play a goblin. Around here we consider those games unsuitable for play… but nobody wants to let their friends down so I needed a character that wasn’t a goblin but I could enjoy just as much as a goblin. May I introduce to you: Anghus PookmarBadh, the goblin lover hunter!
Character
Anghus is a jolly dwarf bearing crude armor and weapons. He keeps a short black beard and long greasy hair in a braid tucked into his mail. His jolly demeanor and orthodox love of beer conceal a dark taboo; he is utterly obsessed with GOBLINS! This wackadoo dwarf is a massive history buff and asserts that the generational conflicts with goblinoids, orcs, and giants are the foundation for dwarven perseverance, ingenuity, and supremacy. If it weren’t for those green boogers and their savagery the dwarves might be as soft as elves!
His equipment is of dubious make; reforged for durability but retaining its bent and jagged style indicative of its status as battle trophies. He keeps a goblin “dogslicer” on his belt as a backup weapon insisting that one should learn to fight like their enemy. He cares little for the things of nature despite being trained as a tracker and a hunter- his passion lies purely in the pursuit and conquest of goblinoid quarry and he makes every effort to master his art.
While he began as a hobbyist, simply studying the history of the goblin wars and occasionally taking the odd goblin-slaying job as an amateur adventurer, he quickly began to see a pattern in the lore; wherever dwarves were in conflict with goblins both races thrived. The dwarves were forced to build bigger and stronger fortresses, engineer better armaments and strategies, require fitness and training even for civilians, and make alliances they would otherwise have been too proud for. The goblins, as well, were forced to unite and federate in order to threaten the dwarves, they had to labor consistently to arm and support their warriors, and they even managed aggressive eugenic reproduction strategies to supply numbers for the hordes; when otherwise they would squabble amongst themselves, subsist meagerly off of minimum effort, and populate only in casual indulgence. These races, in Anghus’s eyes, are symbiotically dependent upon each other to achieve their greatest potential but most dwarves would love to see the goblins utterly eradicated.
In Anghus’ time the genocide of goblinoids is largely complete in dwarven kingdoms… and the kingdoms are weak. Lust for treasure and succession dominate the aristocracy that festers atop the old oligarchy but there is a solution- goblin conservation! If goblins could be cultivated and dwarvenkind honed against them, just as in the old days, they could be great again and never fall. But Anghus’s “mad” rants fell upon disgusted ears until his vision reached the last living son of the greatest goblin slayer in history; heir to a great fortune and vast open land. Together, he and Anghus established The Reserve; a region where goblinkind could thrive and populate. The reserve is fully walled and punctuated with watch-towers ready to light beacons if the goblins attack but for now its goal is distant. The reserve must be stocked with strong goblin blood for dwarvenkind to benefit so a façade conceals the reserve’s true purpose. It is known, for now, as a hunting lodge where elite sportsmen and un-blooded dwarven nobles pay top platinum to participate in “The Culling.”
Every year the goblins muster their best and make a go at the walls but the dwarves are ready- the hunters participating are armed to the teeth, instructed in goblin-slaying by veterans of the goblin wars, and lead by the next generation of goblin-slayers; chief among whom is Anghus. The weakest are slain, the strongest captured and re-released if possible, and in the off-season anghus and his peers travel to far off lands seeking new goblin tribes from which to capture strong specimens for stocking the reserve. While it will be many years, perhaps decades until the reserve is ready… someday the goblins will be able to break free and threaten the dwarven nation once again. That day will mark the beginning of a new age in dwarven greatness; for they will have no choice but to be great or be annihiliated.
He is from the nation of Amar so lets “Make Amar Great Again!”
Build
Frontline- feats to support positioning for cleaving multiple foes and trying not to get hit… as much…
Hunting- finding, following, and capturing goblins through survival, traps, and typical ranger abilities.
Otaku- intimate with greenskin culture in every way through alternate abilities, favored enemy, and some custom traits.
Trapper archetype swaps spells for magical-ish traps, like WoW hunters.
EITR in play- basically we get power attack for free and whirling cleave exists, little else affects us.
Alt Racial: Savage Species Otaku- Gain the weapon familiarity racial trait of any race which you select as a favored enemy. You do not gain the Dwarven weapon familiarity or Stonecunning racial traits.
Trait: Savage Student- You qualify for feats that have a racial requirement if that race is one of your selected favored enemies. If the feat requires a physical feature which you do not possess, aside from the racial type or subtype, then you may still be ineligible for the feat. (We want this to gain access to surprise follow-through, an orc feat.)
Blooded: Battles against the ancient enemies of dwarves have honed your skills. You receive a +1 trait bonus on weapon damage rolls vs Goblins, Orcs, and Giants.
Wild Empathy becomes Savage Empathy; You gain your Favored Enemy bonus to Diplomacy and Intimidate checks vs those favored enemies.
Woodland Stride replaced with Mobility Feat- while not adept at moving through naturally difficult terrain you are adept at wading through foes. (if you already have the mobility feat, you may select another combat feat in its place)
Camouflage replaced with Uncanny Dodge- while not adept at hiding, you are adept at reacting to hidden dangers.
Hide in Plain Sight replaced with Improved Uncanny Dodge- while not a master of stealth, you are a master at defending against attacks from behind and cannot be flanked.
Combat Style- Horde Breaker Style.
Lv2: Cleave, Goblin Cleaver, Flanking Foil, Surprise Follow-Through
Lv6: Great Cleave, Orc Hewer
Lv10: Cleave Through, Giant Killer
Knowledges: Nature, Dungeon, and History are appropriate to have, at least, a little investment in to represent our obsession with the dwarves ancient enemies- about their environment, ecology, society, and the conflicts. Many games won’t reward you much for this but it is, thematically, Anghus’ thing.
Perception is good for anyone and we definitely need it strong to have a chance at spotting sneaky gobbos. Even heavily invested it’ll only be a modest chance vs their high DEX and racial +4 but its always a valuable skill anyway.
Survival is key for our ability to track and find goblins in the wild. Gotta take that.
Social skills like diplo, bluff, intimidate, and sense motive synergize with our Savage Empathy and Favored Enemy abilities so they could be worth a little investment; its not like we don’t have enough skill points to spread around.
Athletic skills like acrobatics, climb, swim, etc… are worth getting your class skill bonus from but optional beyond that.
STR- the more the better, as for any frontliner, but with access only to medium armor and reliance on WIS for our trap DC’s we’ll need to be a little thrifty. I would start with at least 15 so you can bump it up later but if you have a higher point buy, spend as much as possible here.
DEX- a 14 here does nicely to compensate for the lack of heavy armor. If you can afford 16 that’s even better but aside from AC and Reflex saves we don’t expect to rely on it for skills or attacks like an archer would.
CON- is always a staple and our dwarven +2 helps. You can take 12 to have 14 or pump it to 16 in lieu of extra AC.
INT- is probably our least important stat. It would be nice to have strong knowledge for flavor but its just not possible to achieve without sacrificing much more important stuff. Dump to 8.
WIS- is fairly essential. While we aren’t going to have spells our trap DC’s are dependent on this and our perception and survival also need good wis. The dwarven +2 helps again to take 12 for a 14 and probably leave it at that.
CHA- is mostly useless and yet, dumping it below what the dwarven -2 leave it at would cripple any chance of using the Savage Empathy ability so… leave it at 10 for an 8 and hope you get lucky if rolling diplo, bluff, or intimidate vs your favored enemies. There is a lot of fun to be had with social stuff even when you fail, but with anghus I think it would be more fun to succeed.
Feats, Choices, and Features
1- Cleave, Track, Favored Enemy, Savage Empathy, Trapfinding
2- Combat Style: Goblin Cleaver
3- Flanking Foil, Endurance, Favored Terrain
4- Hunter’s Bond (sharing favored bonus)
5- Great Cleave, Favored Enemy 2, Snare Trap + Alarm Trap
6- Combat Style 2: Orc Hewer
7- Furious Focus, (Dodge)/Mobility, Smoke Trap
8- Swift Tracker, Favored Terrain 2
9- Surprise Follow-through, Evasion, Toxic Fumes (smoke) Trap
10- Favored Enemy 3, Combat Style 3: Giant Killer, Launch Trap
11- Improved Surprise Follow-through, Quarry, Firework (smoke) Trap
12- Uncanny Dodge
13- Feat, Favored Terrain 3, Trap
14- Combat Style 4
15- Feat, Favored Enemy 4, Trap
16- Improved Evasion
17- Improved Uncanny Dodge
20- Master Hunter
Exposition
Savage Species Otaku is an alternate racial trait that swaps dwarven racial weapon proficiencies for those of our favored enemies. Right now that means we’re going to be proficient with Dogslicer and HorseChopper since we’re taking goblinoids as our favored enemies. Dogslicer is just a fragile shortsword but HorseChopper is a 1d10 reach weapon with trip and that’s honestly not too terrible; especially if we’re cleaving… which we are. HobGobs and BugBears don’t have any such racial weapons so that’s that.
Savage Student is a custom trait that grants us eligibility for feats normally race-restricted to our favored enemies. We won’t be taking any from goblinoid but, later on, we will take some orcish feats.
Blooded is a trait that gives +1 to damage rolls vs Goblins, Orcs, and Giants (which are all going to be our favored enemies). In combination with our racial hatred trait that all stacks up quite nicely.
Savage Empathy is our alternative to Wild Empathy and it lets us apply our favored enemy bonus to Diplomacy and Intimidate vs our favored enemies as well; rounding out the spectrum of interactions with those foes nicely. While most games focus on the annihilation of favored enemies, this character collects some of them and may need to interact with them.
Favored Enemy gives us +2 vs whatever foe we pick; which absolutely MUST be goblinoids because… why on earth would we be posting this character on this site if not? Thanks to all the traits and alternatives well be getting: +2 to diplomacy, bluff, intimidate, knowledge, perception, sense motive, and survival to track vs goblinoids. We’ll also have a total of +3 to hit and +3 to damage vs goblinoids.
Trapfinding is granted by our Trapper archetype and grants us ½ our level as a bonus to perception and disable checks vs traps, plus we can disarm magical traps. I doubt our favored enemies will utilize many but its appropriate given the archetype and our intent to set traps.
Cleave is going to be our bread and butter. Goblins, especially, tend to use swarm tactics so this will nearly guarantee us the opportunity to hit two at once and it gets better at level 2. The -2 penalty to AC hurts, especially if they’re flanking us, but we’ve got something for that soon.
Our Combat Style is a custom one called HordeBreaker loosely inspired by of the 5e ranger options. The bonus feats available are listed in the homebrew section but the first one we’re taking is Goblin Cleaver because this is a goblin blog and we love goblins; we even love killing goblins! The feat lets us cleave to any small size target we threaten even when not adjacent and grants a whopping +2 to hit when a goblinoid is the secondary target. To iterate the unspoken- nothing changes regarding the primary target; no bonuses and no size restrictions. But if you hit, you can pick any small target in range and cleave to it. If it’s a goblin, you get +2 to hit. If it’s a hobgoblin, you do get the +2 to hit but it still has to be adjacent because it isn’t small. By now we’re at a whopping extra +5 to hit goblins as our secondary targets. Of course this all hinges on landing a hit on your primary target so pick the easiest to hit if you can.
Flanking Foil is a feat that keeps the C-C-C-combos stacking up by denying the flanking bonus to any (adjacent) targets you hit. If we Goblin Cleave targets that are flanking us and hit both, they gain nothing! They are still flanking so targets we do not hit can still gain the bonus but this will really help us wade deep into gobbos with reduced worry. Alternatively you can take dodge/mobility here to help with getting into position; depends on whether you need help getting INTO the swarm, or whether you need help surviving the swarm.
Endurance is a bonus feat that all rangers get. The cool part, for us, is that we can sleep in Med Armor without fatigue so that we’re always ready for gobbos in the night. The CON check stuff is nice but rarely are they called for.
Favored Terrain is going to let us be better at some important stuff and some less important stuff. We get a +2 to initiative and perception, that’s the important stuff, as well as geography, stealth, and survival. Chances are that Forest is the best option for any game as the de facto sword and sorcery setting and its certainly the most appropriate option for this character given his background at the reserve. Swamp would be decent as goblins are common there but few campaigns spend long in the muck.
Hunters Bond is normally where you get an animal companion but we’re not that kind of ranger. Our job is to help the rich kill goblins so we’re going to use the party bond option. We pick a target, spend a move action, and now everyone gets half our favored enemy bonus for a few rounds. Since Cleave is a Standard action, if we’re already in position, we can cleave AND call out a target for our allies to focus down. It’s not much, only a +1 to hit and dmg, but we don’t have to manage a pet which makes this a good build for a dad-casual who has to manage his kids in the other room on game-night. “uh.. yea I cleave, hit hit, and everyone gets +1/+1 vs that guy, KYLE GET DOWN FROM THERE!”
If cleave was our bread and butter, then Great Cleave is our soft brie on toasted sourdough. If the targets are small we don’t have to care about positioning, we can hit any number of goblins surrounding us. If the targets are medium, however, we still need them to be adjacent.
Our next Favored Enemy will be Orc. Because what do you fight after goblins? Hobgoblins! But we already have that so we might as well choose Orc. We’ll have a total of +3 to hit and damage vs Orcs thanks to our trait and racial. Our goblin Favored Attack bonus (FAB) increments up to +4 for a total of +5 to hit and damage (with trait/racial) or +8 to hit (when cleaving goblinoids). Thanks to savage species otaku we also gain proficiency with the Orc Double Axe, Orc Hornbow, and Orc Ram. The Hornbow is actually pretty decent with 2d6 damage dice making it a straight upgrade to longbow. Naturally if you expect to be facing orcs instead of hobgobs in your campaign you can increment your orc favored enemy bonus as soon as you take it instead.
Traps are gonna be fun. Our Trapper archetype swaps spells for these and, though we have the option to do magical traps, I really prefer the flavor of non-magical ones. We learn the Snare trap for free and I’m picking the Alarm trap for our first selection. Seems kinda lame though right? I agree. Any player in my games will get both for free and take the next from this guide but I’m trying not to bend the rules too far. Except for the blatant homebrew stuff… that doesn’t count. What are we doing here again? Alarm just seems so important when hunting and evading goblins; they stalk the night but they also bungle so the Alarm Trap further guarantees that we won’t get ambushed in the night and that they won’t sneak into the keep; it’s a pragmatic and appropriate choice rather than a powerful one. Snare Trap just keeps the target in that square- pairing great with alarm. Gobbo gets caught in a snare, and we hear about it, they get a Hornbow shot to the neck.
Combat Style feat here is going to be Orc Hewer because of the obvious. Just like like Goblin Cleaver we get a +2 bonus to hit orcs when cleaving now, bringing our total up to +5, but the real benefit is that we no longer have to consider adjacency when cleaving to medium targets. This is fantastic. Hobgoblins, BugBears, Orcses, almost anything humanoid can now be easily cleaved. Much like before, you can start with the largest target and cleave to mediums denying anything you hit a flanking bonus. This is the point where we are fully on-line and able to do what we want; cleave all the goblinoids.
Furious Focus is a feat that removes the power attack penalty on the first attack each turn. For us this means more accuracy on the first attack of our cleaves. We will still take the penalty on the secondary targets but the +2 from goblin cleaver and orc hewer has always helped offset that. It’s just good to have more accuracy on that first attack without having to sacrifice bonus damage; if we miss the first hit we miss them all.
Dodge/Mobility (Merged in Elephant In The Room) is our alternative to Woodland Stride. Most rangers can move through undergrowth without being slowed or taking damage but we prefer to wade through goblins. A +1 to AC and a +4 vs AOO’s provoked by movement is major. This is actually worth taking much sooner and, if you do/did, you could take any other combat feat here.
Smoke Trap is the combat affecting trap; the smoke cloud is just a “plus’ shape around the square it triggered in and if they fail a fort save they take -4 to STR and DEX lasting for 1d4+1 rounds after they exit the cloud. A -2 penalty to enemy’s hit and AC? Yes please! We get to combo it up later too.
Swift Tracker lets us track at normal speed without penalty, great for following injured or fleeing quarry. You can also track at double-move speed at half-penalty (normally -20). We do care about tracking as part of our lore is capturing goblins for the reserve so this is nice.
Our second Favored Terrain comes up here and I figure mountains or underground would be the most reasonable. Gobs are known for living in swamp, Orcs are any old where, but Giants are from mountains. Underground covers dungeons too which is good as any but, naturally, pick whatever the campaign offers.
Evasion is a classic, make your reflex save and you take no damage instead of half. It’s a bit late to be facing goblins in most campaigns but we don’t’ care, we want to be able to evade all their fire damage.
Surprise Follow-Through is an orc-only feat which we have access to through our Savage Student trait and Orc Favored Enemy selection. It allows us to treat the 2nd target of our cleaves as flat-footed. It would have been really nice to have this much earlier but there were just so many essentials that seemed more important. None-the-less we have furious focus making it easier to hit our first target even while power attacking, and this makes it easier to hit our second target, which makes us more likely to get a third attack and that’s worthwhile.
Toxic Fumes Trap is an upgrade to our smoke trap. The trap now requires two fort saves- 1 vs the smoke, 1 vs the fumes. If they fail vs the fumes they are nauseated while in the smoke and for 1d4+1 rounds after. What was already a great trap is now an even better double whammy and, while odds are poor that a big meatboy frontliner will fail one save, having to make 2 means it is worth using even against such high-fort targets.
Our third favored enemy will be Giants. If goblins are the smol greenskins, hobbos and orcs are the medium ones, then Giants are the reasonable next step up. It also makes sense with the combat style feat we’re taking at this level. There is only one weapon I found that is related to Giants, the Ogre Hook, but it’s a martial weapon so our Otaku trait does nothing here. We also get to increment one Favored Enemy Bonus and can even choose the one we just took. While I want to be the ultimate goblin hunter… that’s not a useful angle for most campaigns and you should probably just increment your bonus vs Giants. Our racial doesn’t grant anything to hit giants but it does grant a +4 dodge bonus to AC which is very very useful. Our trait does grant a +1 to hit, however, giving us a total of +5 to hit, +4 to damage, and +4 to AC vs giants. If you choose, instead, to organically power up your bonus vs goblins that’d be a total of +7 to hit and +7 to damage which is totally unnecessary.
Combat Style choice here is going to be Giant Killer. This feat is just Goblin Cleaver and Orc Hewer but for Large targets and Giants. You can now cleave to large targets regardless of adjacency and gain a +2 to hit giants when they are the secondary targets of your cleave. Our current combo is: Furious Focus Great Cleave to make the primary target of any size easier to hit while power attacking, Surprise Follow Through Giant Killer to cleave up to a large target regardless of adjacency and use their flat-footed AC, then just more giant killer cleaving vs regular AC, and every target struck loses its flanking bonus vs you.
Launch Trap is like the WoW survival hunter ability; you stick a trap on your arrow/bolt/thrown and either shoot it into a square where it becomes set or shoot it straight at a foe which deals projectile damage and immediately triggers the trap. The best use of this is the fix an Alarm trap to a balled up dirty sock and annoy the heck out of your allies. A lesser, yet reasonable, use is the toxic fumes smoke trap on a cluster of adjacent foes potentially imposing -4 to DEX/STR and Nauseated before even engaging in melee. Attaching the trap to a projectile must be done as part of the full round action to craft the trap so it takes some prep work but the launch trap ability has no limit aside from how many traps you can make in a day.
Improved Surprise Follow-Through is a great feat which, like its pre-requisite, would have been great to have much sooner alongside great-cleave but theres just so many good feats needed and we had to bend the rules to be eligible anyway because its an orc feat. In some ways this build would have been better for a fighter but… I just didn’t want to go that route so here we are. This feat allows you to treat ALL of your secondary targets as flat-footed. Naturally this can make a pretty big difference in your chance to hit and keep cleaving.
Quarry is kind of like a smite or challenge you can use against a single creature from among your favored enemies. You get some bonuses to tracking and an extra +2 to hit, and auto-confirm crits. You can only have 1 at a time, wait an hour after killing one before you can mark another, or a whole day if it gets away. Not a very impressive ability but its pretty good to use on the primary target of your cleave; except that it’s a standard action to mark your quarry.
Firework Trap is another addon/upgrade to your smoke trap that forces a 2nd fort save but in a 10ft radius. If the target(s) fail they are blinded for 1d4+1 rounds plus they must contend with the Smoke still if they were within 5ft. We can only add one upgrade to a smoke trap so you have to pick between Toxic Fumes and FireWork but this one has a special option that we haven’t really talked about before. Many of the ranger traps can be either Supernatural (magical) or Extraordinary (material) and there are some different rules for each which I’m mostly planning to ignore because the Ex traps are more expensive and with a gimped DC just to last longer which won’t matter in most campaigns. Anyway, if the Firework trap is Su then it forces a Will save instead of Fort. This is big money vs bruisers who often have poor will and rely upon their sight. Honestly this one might be better taken earlier in place of toxic fumes but whatever…
Uncanny Dodge replaces camouflage because we’re really not a sneaky character. But we are supposed to be good at fighting while surrounded and we’re difficult to surprise by sneaky folks. We can’t be caught flat-footed in many normal situations. Probably not very useful but neither would be camo.
We’re fully built by now so your feat choices can be whatever you want. Improved Initiative and Weapon Focus are some basic boring options but always useful. Favored Defense adds half your Favored Enemy Bonus to AC vs that type of foe. Whirling Cleave is an EITR addition that replaces Cleave Through- it’s a free single 5ft step at any time between your
cleave attacks though; I feel like Lunge is more reliable for hitting more targets via reach despite the further -2 to AC you’d have to take on top of cleave’s -2 to AC. Advanced Ranger Trap increases your traps DC’s for both perception and saves by +1 like spell focus for your traps.
As traps go the Freezing and Poison traps seem really good, even worth taking instead of my suggestions if you like, but otherwise many are either off-theme or lackluster for combat use. The marking trap would be great for tracking down a special target that fled in order to capture and bring back to the reserve. The Pit trap would be very interesting if launched; aim it at the ground beneath a target and “floop” theres a hole now, lol; how does that work as an Ex trap?
You learn Improved Evasion and Improved Uncanny Dodge way up there. Very cool abilities that certainly work for the goblin master theme as you’ll be taking half damage, if any, from their preferred aoe fire spells and you cannot be flanked or sneak attacked. Improved Uncanny, of course, makes flanking foil redundant so you can just retrain that to whatever… toughness or something.
Our last few favored terrains and favored enemies are up to you but I figure demons might eventually be a wise choice due to the goblin pantheon being, largely, demonic. If Anghus writes his own story I figure he’ll have to tangle with some barghests eventually. Magical Beasts are also reasonable for having worgs among that category but also, in general, there’s a lot of magical beasts out there to encounter. If you take dwarves as a favored enemy you will, comically, gain the dwarven weapon proficiencies and those are some decent weapons but its not the most appropriate choice for this character unless something really depraved happens. (I hope it does).
The capstone, Master Hunter, makes capturing goblins effortless. We can track at full speed without penalty always, we can make a single save-or-die attack against our favored enemies, and we can choose for it to be a save or KO instead. Now if this character is level 20… the question is… what are we doing? Our initial goal was to gather goblins for sport hunting and here we are alongside other characters whos ambitions may be to travel the planes, ascend to godhood, or conquer the known world… What now?
Combos and Strats
This character is relatively simple, as most strikers are, and our angle is to just wade deep and great cleave. That’s most of it really. All of the feats just do that and improve it. All of them.
To re-iterate what we’ve already covered in the exposition: eventually we will be able to Great Cleave to any additional targets within reach who are Large or smaller regardless of adjacency, ignore the power attack penalty on the primary target, treat additional targets as flat-footed, any deny flanking bonus to any targets hit.
Bonuses to hit and damage (or ac) vs goblins, orcs, and giants will be stacking up as well.
After you Great Cleave you can spend a move with Hunter’s Bond to share some bonuses to hit/dmg. Its nice for focusing fire but, depending on your WIS and the duration, repositioning may often be better.
Well, we’re a frontline striker without heavy armor so that’s a weakness. We can use a shield to get a bit more AC but then we’re not 2handing. Compromises must be made between AC and Damage and that will be a tough choice. Furthermore, all of our specialization is into cleaving multiple targets. Single-target won’t be terrifically impressive and we won’t have much to offer aside from flanking. Lastly, if the target isn’t a favored enemy then we won’t be very dangerous to them either. This character really isn’t for every campaign and, honestly, the only published AP I know of that it should be reasonably effective over the long run in is Rise of the RuneLords. (It is also the only AP I’ve played.)
Our traps will be cool, but of course few campaigns or encounters really play into that. The’ll be most effective as defensive measures overnight until you can launch them and, even then, my choices target fortitude mostly.
Fighter. If you go fighter you’ll have heavy armor and enough feats to get weapon focus and weapon spec for bonus damage to Everything instead of just your favored enemies. You’ll have to take your orc hewer and giant killer feats 1 level later and theres nothing in the base class to make you eligible for surprise follow-through but I’m sure that could be home-brewed away. You also lose all the tracking and skills stuff but you’ll be less likely to die and that is nice.
You could just swap some feats around as ranger taking furious focus at 3, surprise follow-through at 5, Great Cleave at 7, Imp. Surprise follow-thru at 9 and just forget about flanking foil. This gets you that higher accuracy on the 2nd target, and beyond, sooner at the cost of number of targets later and getting flanked.
Roleplay
Anghus will sleep in his armor thanks to the endurance feat and because he needs to be prepared for a goblin ambush but… he does have a set of “Make Amar Great Again” footie-jamas and a high quality shortstack goblin waifu daikamura silk body pillow in his bedroll; he keeps them packed in a compression sack and only takes them out for sleeping at the inn (never in the field). For this reason he always buys his own room if he’s not going to sleep in his armor. Slip your DM a note about this and leave it up to him to incentivize exposing you for a solid round of laughs at the table.
You gotta do most of the typical dwarf things but you also need to demonstrate a worthiness to be ostracized; you ARE a dwarf and you believe it in your heart but others should have reason to disagree. A love of food, drink, and smoking are a great start but interest in fine metalwork, stone, and gems should be lacking. You should be considerably less stubborn, perhaps nearly irreverent of tradition, and, though you know well the history, care little for family names, status (such as being noble-born or blooded), and heritage. (Being blooded, fyi, refers to having participate in the killing of a monster or racial foe).
Following your motivations will be tough in most campaigns. If the setting has adventurers guilds and job boards that is a great place to look for side-quests that have a chance to expose you to goblins- obviously if the quests says goblin you should be adamant that the party MUST go do that quest but if no such things are available just look for the best shot in the dark. Where there is magic there might be goblins- they are common subjects of experiments for wizards and the like. Warlords and Bandit groups often attract goblins or force them to fight so that’s a decent shot. Caves and Ruins are great places for gobs to take over and build a home in. Distant settlements are ripe targets for goblin raids. There are many ways to rationalize odds of encountering gobbos and on top of all that; it’s the off-season for the reserve so money is tight. The reserve isn’t exactly for-profit anyway so if you just need to go make some gold, its what you gotta do.
Ultimately you’ll need to explain Anghus’ motivations to your DM and request that goblins, even just a single one, be included in every major arc of the campaign. Whether they’re a minion of the main baddie, an unrelated side-quest en route, or a random encounter… its not like they’re difficult to throw in or balance. What IS difficult, however, is getting them back to the reserve. 1st we need to subdue them; keep a net or 3 on hand for this purpose then bind and gag. You now have two options- the hard way is to drag them along until you can go back to town. You should always keep enough gold on hand to either pay for some competent npc’s to transport the goblin to the reserve for you (you may only need to pay a little and send a letter authorizing the reserve to pay the rest upon delivery) or to pay for competent care and containment of the specimen until a team from the reserve can come collect it. Sending word to the reserve is another tough one so maybe try to keep a Bird Feather Token (carries messages unerringly, 150gp) handy so you don’t have to rely on some commoner’s ability to traverse hundreds of miles. Alternatively, if the DM is accommodating enough perhaps the reserve can furnish you with an even more specialized magical item that will just teleport the gobbo straight there. While that may be a chessy and unsatisfying way to handle it, it can really help keep the narrative going and it doesn’t have to be available for every opportunity. Maybe you have several bird tokens, but only one gob-a-porter ever.
You are not a bard, but you do keep several journals which are more like guide-books that you’re writing. Goblin Biology, Goblin Religion, Goblin Sociology, and your most ambitious project- Goblin Dragonology. You’re sure that goblin dragons exist somewhere… it’s like a rule of the material plane; if it exists there are dragons of it.